GOVERNMENT IS THE CAUSE OF OUR DISCONTENTS.

Yesterday's post on gridlock ran long.  We continue in a similar vein today with my Chicago Boyz colleague David Foster revising and extending "Life in the Fully Politicized Society."  His column from years ago was pessimistic. Things have not gotten any better.

I’m afraid we have quite a few people in America today who like having “the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions.”  But for most people, especially for creative and emotionally-healthy people, the politicization of everything leads to a dreary and airless existence.

In her novel We the Living, based partly on her personal experiences in the early Soviet Union (which is probably why it is, IMO, the best of her books from a literary standpoint), Ayn Rand paints a vivid picture of what day-to-day life in the politicized society is like.  Her heroine, Kira Argounova, is a strong anti-Communist, but absent other options has found a job (which she got through intervention of a Communist friend) in something called “The House of the Peasant,” which is dedicated to “a closer understanding between workers and peasants,”  under the slogan “The Clamping of City and Village,” celebrated with posters bearing slogans like “Comrades, strengthen the Clamping!”

Kira’s boss at the House of the Peasant is an older woman “thin, gray-haired, military and in strict sympathy with the Soviet Government; her chief aim in life was to give constant evidence of how strict that sympathy was, even though she had graduated from a women’s college…” But the boss lives in fear of “a tall girl with a long nose and a leather jacket, who was a Party member and could make Comrade Bitiuk shudder at her slightest whim, and knew it…”

Such women are still among us.  These days they're the Keffiyeh Karens.

In her ready and confident fury, her rudeness, her iron-fisted appetite for confrontation over infractions of what she deems political and moral gospel, the Keffiyeh Karen is related to a broader epidemic of the Gen Z Mean Girl. These Mean Girls have graduated from running the schoolyard to terrorizing the workplace. If there is one type to be afraid of in modern offices, it isn’t the lech or the shouty, hungover male middle manager. It’s the twenty-three-year-old gluten-free vegan graduate, wet behind the ears. We know what these misanthropic misses are capable of — we’ve seen the Phoebes and Annas of Just Stop Oil chuck soup on Van Gogh.

Several good friends of mine who work in corporate settings have told me tales to chill the blood — women in their early twenties conducting bullying campaigns, being proudly insubordinate to their bosses. They never face consequences.

Your business is rejoicing, and if you're not reacting properly, expect to be shamed by the Keffiyeh Karens, and perhaps kicked out of the fantasy football pool.

Toward the end of the post, David writes a passage that continues the message of that longish post I referred to above.

The Democrats, together with their media and academic cheering squads, accused Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular of being Authoritarian. But it should actually be clear to anyone paying attention that by far the stronger authoritarian spirit–confirmed by actual authoritarian actions–exists among the Democrats: the push to censor social media, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the unlawful importing of what they expect to be future Democratic voters, the intent to neuter any challenges from the Supreme Court, Charles Schumer’s evident approval of the idea that the intelligence agencies are sovereign over an elected President…all of this is intended to keep control of government exclusively within the control of the Party and its affiliates. But today’s Democrats go beyond Authoritarianism: in many ways, they represent outright Totalitarianism. There is no aspect of American society that they do not wish to control and to reform according to their preferences. And they will seek to undermine the emergence and existence of any independent centers of influence that threaten their hegemony. This is why they don’t like Elon Musk and will–if they have the power–use tax and regulatory policy to prevent the emergence of any new Elon Musks.

Should Kamala Harris win the election–and especially if the Democrats should gain control of both houses of Congress–it is not at all clear that the march toward authoritarianism and totalitarianism will be reversible. Those Republicans who say, well, if Trump loses in 2024, we can get a better and more electable candidate next time–those people are either kidding themselves or are really aligned with the opposition. Recovery may not be a matter of four years, but rather of multiple decades. Do not underrate the stakes in this election.

Should the Normals be subjected to another four years of Obamas pen and phone, being run by remote control through a President Harris, what happens next might not be amusing.  David Foster is simply contemplating the stakes.  Kurt Schlichter extends.

The premise of a democracy is that individual citizens can participate in the political process by making their positions known and voting for representatives who they understand will support their views. But those components are under attack here and throughout the West. They are under attack because our garbage elite considers our participation in our own governance to be both morally illegitimate and a practical nuisance. As a result, the elite is doing everything it can to prevent us from participating in our own governance. It’s intent to make us into serfs, disarmed, disenfranchised serfs who obey in silence.

After all, when citizens participate in their own governance, they may choose policies that the elite dislikes. And the elite doesn’t like the policies normal people prefer. Part of it is profit and power, and part of it is the elite’s moral grandstanding – don’t underestimate the power of politics to make spiritually empty people such as our trash ruling class feel good about themselves. The elite don’t like competition from the peasants. It cuts into their action and is generally inconvenient.

As an aside, dear reader, ask yourself why we have almost never seen regular order appropriations for all the government's departments, let alone for a few such as State and War.  Might the eternal shutdown-continuing resolution-debt ceiling cycle be the way by which Official Washington continues its preferred policies?  Who knows, there still might be a line item for the Signal Corps to buy insulators for field code lines.  For certain, the egg graders and handrail height inspectors will never lack for work.

The elite wants what we’re now getting: an administrative state where experts who just happen to share all the priorities and prejudices of the elite make all the decisions. Do you wonder why the left is so concerned about controlling academia? Because that’s where experts are made, and you don’t get expert certification unless you embrace the elite’s ideology. Do you think it’s a coincidence that they’re demanding DEI loyalty oaths from graduate students and professors? You must listen to experts, they tell us, and by the way, we get to decide who the experts are.

Then come the struggle sessions, only they're too crazy for Ayn Rand or George Orwell to describe.

Look at the whole Springfield eating dogs and cats thing. The elite, without the consent of the people in the community, dropped 20,000 Haitians directly from a Third World hellhole into a town of about 60,000 normal Americans. Not surprisingly, the effects were dramatic, especially when our government is directly and indirectly subsidizing these aliens. You have crime, social services stretched to the breaking point, chaotic schools, housing shortages, and unlicensed drivers smashing into people’s cars (which is a huge deal for people without a lot of money). Not surprisingly, the locals are unhappy about it. They are complaining. And, according to the elite, that must be stopped. That’s where the informal oppression comes in. First, they shame the Americans who raise their voices, calling them racist for daring to point out how their community has changed and not in ways that they like. Then pinko pastors from the pipe up about how Jesus said you’ve got to invite the whole Third World into your backyard (Spoiler: He didn’t). Then they’re called liars. Then, when they still won’t shut up, the left cites fake claims of bomb threats to invoke a heckler’s veto to silence the uppity proles – this is literally laundering foreign disinformation.

We're not yet disguising the paddy wagons as champagne delivery vans, and we still have our votes, and we still have our platforms to talk back.  The Colonel says, use them.

The establishment has the advantage that normal people default into thinking that everything is the same as it always was, that things are working, and that the system is functional. But none of that is true. This isn’t 20, 30, or 40 years ago when two opposing parties fought it out. Today, you have one ruling elite - which includes members of both parties – that seeks to eliminate even the possibility of opposition. The things that make a democracy a democracy – an informed [populace - stupid speech recognition - Ed.] free speech and debate, and petitioning for the redress of grievances - are the things that are under attack. They are targeting the foundations of democracy and calling the wreckage “democracy.”

We need to understand what is happening so we can fight it. The way we fight it is to reject their premises.

If not now, getting that even heavier boot off our necks in four years might prove more difficult.